Children of No Man's Land

by G. B. Stern

“Oh, we’ll see that Deb isn’t much alone,” promised Beattie, laughing; “I expect she’ll almost wish us away sometimes....”

La llorraine was an impossible visitor. Manon, on the other hand, as Mrs Dolph Carew, was welcomed by the Phillips, who thought her “quite a sweet little thing” and admired her demure manners and prim foreign enunciation; and chaffed her for her perfectly conventional point of view—for the Phillipses considered themselves too intelligent to be altogether conventional. Morals were different ... morals could be taken for granted, like Deb’s allegiance to the family, and Synagogues on Saturday, and clean white kid gloves, and a joint on Sundays, and England through thick and thin, and the windows always a little open in the children’s nurseries, and other matters of unalterable standing.

Nell Redbury had entirely taken over Deb’s canteen job, so she was seldom available for companionship. The other Redburys came and went, linked by Beatrice to the Phillipses; Otto, still offended with Deb for her marriage, peevishly forbade Trudchen to instruct her in private succulent recipes for Samson’s delectation. Hedda was not very interesting—perhaps because she tried so hard to be interesting. She pronounced “temperament” with a far-away look and an accent on the last syllable; and lamented how wild and free a demi-maid she might have been had not Gustav Fürth unfortunately made her his wife before she had even time to get properly started. She capped conversation persistently with the two phrases “Je n’en vois pas la nécéssité,” and “Ça n’empêche pas les sentiments,” which really, uttered with the right air of esprit and diablerie, could be made to impart an indecent flavour to almost any subject. Hedda was ... rather superfluous. It was not as though she were definitely musical, like David, or definitely beautiful, like young Nell; or possessed the quaint wit of Hardy; or the charm and vitality of Con. Deb did not care about Hedda. Deb was becoming desperate with boredom ... her condition made boredom not lethargic but a restless agony; the poisoning game had lost any power to relieve those long family dinners, and appeared merely futile; the Phillipses were growing ever fonder and more fond of her. She felt her ego to be a tiny object lost inside an enormous parcel, to which everybody had wrapped round yet another layer, till the Phillipses had put on the final brown paper and string. And Samson abandoned the title of Una, and proudly took to calling her “little Mother.”...

This was an inadequate excuse for her visit to Blair Stevenson’s rooms. But.... “He might have waited at least another six months ... till December. But I know they are all going to be facetious about that baby!”

Her boredom was solely of the mind. Physically, she was feeling brilliantly well, abnormally vital. Her vitality was not allowed to be idle.... Samson, like so many rigid Puritans, was also a sensualist. And Deb, tired of the game itself reiterated, longed once more for the demi-game which was so much a play of the mind ... a play of two minds; entraining imagination and nimble fantasy and fear and danger ... all the fine shades. Promiscuous adventure had become with her too much a habit to break off with one wrench. The first thought of Blair was an inevitable reaction from “being good.” Inevitably, also, she englamoured her final experience before Samson acquired her as his legal possession, and forgot that Blair had not given great satisfaction, either, in the matter of ... well, ecstasy. Remembered only that he was her kindred in mind; that he had the light twist of humour she so missed; the faculty to play; and to play up ... sometimes a visionist, sometimes a kindly cynic, always the man of deep and great experience ... she was never dull with Blair. And if the missing thrill had been her fault, not his, then perhaps now she was married, things would be different....

Anyway, she was only going to look at his rooms, from the outside ... because he was still away, still in America. She was only going to steal from her cosy dug-out back again to No Man’s Land, so that at dinner with the Phillipses to-morrow, she might console herself deliciously by the thought that she was a secret rebel to that irksome old Phillips’ Illusion. Certainly Blair was still away, or—or Antonia would have mentioned it (would Antonia?). So the expedition on to forbidden territory had the merit of being also perfectly safe.

And yet she might not have gone ... had not general conditions grouped themselves in a way so absurdly conventional that she could not refuse to attend to her obvious stage directions. For duty obliged Samson to stay away for a night; and this fact he paraded with so much pomp and formality and vexation, made such vigilant arrangements for the disposal of his little wife’s loneliness, and reassured her so often as to his certain return the following night, that the comedy of the deceived husband suggested itself automatically—to anyone whose brain worked like Deb’s. And then Abe rang up from a call-office to say that Martha (whom Samson’s care had ensured as a companion for Deb that night) had a bilious attack, and did not want to go out, and would Deb come to her instead, or should they let Florence know to go round? Deb herself, being at that moment in the bath, did not answer the telephone, but received the information from a breathless housemaid, who thought the telephone “a nasty thing,” liable at any moment to explode, so that she never listened long enough to receive and deliver a message as it was given. Deb did not bother to turn off the taps, but called back carelessly through the rush and splutter, that she’d expect Florence and would run round to see how Martha fared in the morning. She repeated this twice; and turning off the water a moment later, heard afar off the voice of the housemaid explaining that Mrs Samson Phillips would go round to Mrs Abe Phillips, and expect to see Mrs Herbert Phillips in the morning....

“Muddler!” reflected Deb. And then she smiled ... all the banal mechanism was so absurdly in her favour—husband away—a muddle on the telephone—suppose she assumed that her bath-water had run on a minute or two longer, swamping all sound, then she would apparently be justified in her late appearance at Martha’s by an after explanation that she had remained at home waiting for Flo, according to arrangement. It seemed a pity to waste all this most excellent clockwork on an appointment with last year’s shadows in Jermyn Street. But still, even Blair’s wraith might be more amusing than a surfeit of Abe or Flo.... Deb never bothered to resist the guidance of external circumstances....

Straight to Jermyn Street ... the servants would believe she had gone round to Martha.... Then an hour later she would appear at Martha’s, saying reproachfully that she had been waiting all the time for Flo.... Nobody would bother to verify the discrepancy in time; the loss of an hour....

So—straight to Jermyn Street ... just for the fun of it! Just for the fun of huddling herself in a disguising cloak, and once again creeping with awed feet along that silent, mysterious avenue where “men of the world” abode ... for the fun of gazing wistfully up at the imperturbable stone frontage behind which playtime lay forgotten ... for the fun of being once more in mischief, dreading discovery, thrilling at her own daring ... for the fun of flouting the Phillips’ Illusion!